Canadian actor William Shatner became the oldest astronaut in history to travel to space aboard Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard
“It was said that if man was destined to fly, he would have wings. But he flew. He found he needed it. ” This is one of the phrases that Captain Kirk uttered in one of the episodes of the legendary Star Trek series.
The actor who played him, William Shatner, flew into space, and this time for real, on Wednesday, October 13, from the Texas desert. At 90, the “captain” is the oldest astronaut in history so far. Reached 105 km in height on the company’s New Shepard NS-18 ship blue origin owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
This was the second flight with tourists in charge of the American billionaire Bezos. Along with Shatnet were three other passengers on board: the former NASA engineer Chris Boshuizen, clinical research entrepreneur Glen de Vries and Blue Origin vice president and engineer Audrey Powers. The trip took about 11 minutes and they could only feel gravity for a few seconds.
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Before living this experience and with a few days’ training, Shatnet confessed to being scared, but also feeling lucky because he was going to live an unusual moment. The number of people who have been in the space is less than 600 and the vast majority of them are professionals.
Shatner is aware that Star Trek has had an important influence on professional astronauts and is grateful to be part of what could be the path to space tourism. Blue Origin and also Virgin Galactic started these types of flights this year, although they are probably not within the reach of many pockets.
The actor played that part that dreams of doing the same one day and as Captain Kirk himself would say, “sometimes a feeling is all we humans have to go on.”
New Shepard NS-18 mission